Social Icons

Kiki's Delivery Service

Friday, June 10, 2016

Last weekend, I had a mini Studio Ghibli marathon with some of my best friends. We watched two films: "Howl's Moving Castle" (which I ADORED, by the way) and "Kiki's Delivery Service."

The reason why I'm writing this post on "Kiki's Delivery Service" is 1) I loved this movie a whole lot, too, and 2) I can actually apply this movie to life in my twenties.

The premise is that all young witches move out of their parents' homes at thirteen for a whole year to practice their talents and do good things for the community. Kiki moves out to an adorable Swedish-inspired city filled with kind people and adventures.

The movie itself is absolutely adorable, and it's definitely worth seeing, so I won't spoil anything for you here. However, at one point in the movie, Kiki is unable to use her magic, and at that point, it seems as though she's lost everything. But once she escapes the city for a day with a new artist friend from the country, they have a conversation about inspiration, and how it sometimes comes and goes. And sometimes, we need to take a break before we can find it again.

Now, I need to make it clear that this is inspiration in the creative sense. Kiki's artist friend Ursula is a painter. She doesn't have magic to fly around on a broom or talk to an adorable black cat like Kiki does. But this perspective does affect Kiki profoundly.

It was around this point that one of my best friends told me that this is so similar to real life. Y'all, she was right.

I'm a writer. It's what I've wanted to do since college, and it's what I've always loved doing, even as a child. I can remember writing stories in spiral-bound notebooks and journals about anything and everything, and that slowly turned into writing on my laptop, whether that was blogging right here on [Savannah] in Wonderland or writing a bunch of short stories in one month to turn into a hardbound book to give to my parents on Christmas morning.

Is writing always easy? Absolutely not. It can be absolutely daunting to write something when you're not, well, feeling it. When it's as though you can't get even a single letter onto a blank page, whether it's a Word Doc or a piece of notebook paper.

There's a term for this, and it's actually as common as peanut butter and jelly: writer's block.

Kiki basically experiences writer's block. Or, in her case, it may be "magic block." She's in a situation where she's using her magic to help others, and she's built her livelihood on it, so when she loses her ability to use it, it causes her to feel down about herself. The same can apply to anyone in the creative industry, as well as us twenty-somethings who are just trying to figure out how we fit in the grand scheme of things known as the real world.

Whenever you feel uninspired, you can do a couple of things: 1) take a break or try something new, like a different or similar hobby, or a new, smaller side project that you can play around with in the meantime before jumping back into the big project you're working on; and 2) pray. Seriously, prayer can be a huge help in jumping over any kind of creative block. Maybe God wants you to focus your attention elsewhere right now, or maybe you need to look at things from a different angle.

So, all this being said, there's something to be said about this little anime movie about a little girl who moves into the big city to find herself and help others along the way. It's totally normal to feel that it's difficult to find your place in the world; sometimes, you just have to take a deep breath and look beyond your own perspective and find creative inspiration - or, better yet, find God's presence and guidance - in a place you'd never expect.